1990:027 - NEWRY: The Abbey, South Ward, Newry Urban District, Down

A machine-cut foundation trench at 'The Abbey', Castle Street, Newry was cleaned and examined for the Historic Monuments and Buildings Branch, DOE(NI). The area is known as the site of a Cistercian monastery, founded from Mellifont in 1153. Granted to Sir Nicholas Bagenal around 1552, a picture-map of 1587 shows a group of detached buildings along a frontage line which survives as Castle Street. Little is known of the archaeological potential of the area, and development proposals are routinely monitored.

Cleaning of the machine-cut trench revealed a subsoil of orange sand immediately beneath modern ground level. Two archaeological features were noted, both infilled voids intersected by the trench. One had been greatly disturbed by a modern drain, but the other, a U-profile ditch or pit, presented a clean cross-section.

The void, over 3m wide and surviving to a depth of 1.4m, was infilled with layers of black, humic soil over eroded subsoil. The layers were waterlogged and contained well-preserved organic remains. Hand-worked pieces of oak and elder, and twigs of hazel, blackthorn, dog rose and willow or aspen were removed. Shells included oyster, mussel, winkles and limpets, while bones (yet to be firmly identified) included cattle, sheep, poultry, fish and ?human. No pottery sherds or other artifacts were recovered from the trench face.

In the absence of readily datable objects, some of the wood fragments have been submitted to the Queen's University Belfast radiocarbon dating laboratory. Interpretation of the archaeological features must remain inconclusive until larger scale excavation takes place in advance of proposed development on the site adjacent to the trench examined, in 1991.

The limited cross-sectional view available suggests that the void may have been an open ditch running on a line close to and parallel to the medieval Castle Street. The ditch appears to be cut by the gable of the adjacent building, which is of 18th-century date. The (butchered) bones and shells are likely to be food debris, while the (?)human bone may derive from a disturbed monastic burial in the vicinity. The absence of pottery (progressively less likely to be found, the older the deposition date) suggests a medieval or Early Christian period horizon.